Last week, Afghan Newspapers carried the report of a sexual assault carried out by a cleric in Kunduz province. The rape victim was a 10-year-old girl who was learning Islamic subjects over the past four months. This shocked many and filled them with strong disgust and antipathy. Moreover, this seems to have driven home the paradoxical phenomenon that those who profess piety and preach religion are usually the ones who commit the most shocking crimes.

The reasons behind the crimes committed by the clerics are logically stated by Khalid Zaheer, a religious scholar. According to him, one of the reasons for why the so-called believers commit crime with impunity is that they believe that the rituals they perform (prayers, fasts, Haj, almsgiving, etc) would far outweigh the sins that they have committed. They could not be more wrong in this misconception.

The Quran says that God will take His decision based on the weight age given to the deeds which shall be based on the intentions and inclinations, and not on the apparent acts of the individual. It is thus not the physical act itself, but the purpose and quality of the deed that will tilt the result one way or the other for the doer.

If a religious act is undertaken by a person to outweigh the ill effect of some harm he has inflicted on a fellow human being, or to show off to another, it is unlikely to carry any value in the eyes of God.

Secondly, those who claim knowledge of religion also hope that they will be interceded for by the Prophet (PBUH) which, of course, will be accepted. Such an understanding of intercession has been denied thrice in Surah Baqarah. On the Day of Judgement, no soul shall come to the rescue of another soul, no friendship will matter, no intercession will be accepted, nor any other form of external help be entertained (2:48; 2:123; 2:254).

I do agree that it does not give any of us an opportunity to become complacent and begin to commit crime in the hope that someone will intercede for us in the hereafter.

It should be taken into consideration that there is big discrepancy between religious knowledge and virtue. Of course, knowledge is not always the epitome of desirable qualities. Sometimes knowledge is the same as a flashlight in the hand of a thief or a knife in the hand of a villain. They use it as instrument to gain their own advantages.

This is neither the first and nor be the last crime committed by a cleric. The clergy are not the infallible creatures rather they are human, as we are, with a set of positive and negative characteristics. Hence, it is not a matter of surprise to see a cleric succumbing to the mundane temptations or to the persistence of their lust for sin.

Moreover, it is wrong to generalize a pessimistic judgment about the clergy or attribute a cleric’s mistake to the religion he follows – it is what many individuals do.

It has happened frequently that some, with only a little knowledge, use the uniforms of the clergy to be fed this way or just to exploit the common people. So, whenever such people get good reputation in an area, they misuse their position by carrying out misdeeds. This way, they also defame the clergy.

It is also true that some do not practice what they preach. They sermonize people, but their actions are contrary to their words. Mostly, such people adopt dual behaviors and talk in attractive way just to prey upon their fellows.

Nowadays, our society suffers enormously from lack of spirituality and morality. In other words, our individual and social life is empty of virtue and our religion has been seriously marginalized.

Of course, when one lacks moral standards, religious boundaries and prevailing law will not be respected. I believe that the role of moral standards in one is the strongest factors that can stop from committing crime. However, if morality dies in the soul of a nation, then crime will rise. In short, trampling upon moral standards and religious instructions will lead to crime and corruption in a society.

Mahatma Gandhi says, “There are times when you have to obey a call which is the highest of all, i.e., the voice of conscience even though such obedience may cost many a bitter tear, and even more, separation from friends, from family, from the state to which you may belong, from all that you have held as dear as life itself. For this obedience is the law of our being.”

It merits mentioning that religion intends to guide mankind to the right path, to instill moral values in us, to quench one’s spiritual thirst for virtue, and to uproot cruelty and violence from human society. As a result, whenever human societies were deep in vice, violence and immorality, and shrouded in the darkness of crime and corruption, the holy messengers of God emerged with a set of moral codes and religious compass to humanize the society and to guide human beings towards righteousness. Now, it is we to embrace the moral codes and religious guidelines so as to live a life empty of cruelties, violence ….

John Foster Dulles says very aptly, “Economic and military power can be developed under the spur of laws and appropriations. But moral power does not derive from any act of Congress. It depends on the relations of a people to their God. It is the churches to which we must look to develop the resources for the great moral offensive that is required to make human rights secure, and to win a just and lasting peace.”